« UFC 66: Liddell vs. Ortiz 2 | Home | K-1 12/31 Osaka Dome Dynamite event »
PRIDE 12/31 Man Festival event results
By Zach Arnold | December 31, 2006
Full-post view gets you the latest match results.
The claimed attendance for the Saitama event was 48,709. The Yoshida vs. James Thompson fight grabbed top headlines for PRIDE coverage (the K-1 event took a majority of the media coverage in Japan). PRIDE President Nobuyuki Sakakibara fielded questions from the media about Mirko Cro Cop leaving to fight in UFC. Sakakibara stated that PRIDE would run in Las Vegas on 2/24 and run in California next June. He also claimed events in China, Brazil, South Korea, Russia, and Europe. A Lightweight GP tournament will also be held.
- Kiyoshi Tamura defeated Ikuhisa Minowa in R1 in 1 minute, 18 seconds by KO.
- Shin’ya Aoki defeated Joachim Hansen in R1 in 2 minutes, 24 seconds with a gogoplata for the submission.
- Akihiro Gono defeated Yuki Kondo after 2R by a 2-1 judges’ decision.
- Mauricio Shogun defeated Kazuhiro Nakamura after 3R by a 3-0 judges’ decision.
- Gilbert Melendez defeated Tatsuya Kawajiri after 2R by a 3-0 judges’ decision.
- Kazuyuki Fujita defeated Eldari Kurtanidze in R1 by TKO in 2 minutes, 9 seconds with a short uppercut (and soccer ball kicks) to win the fight (referee stopped it).
- Takanori Gomi defeated Mitsuhiro Ishida in R1 in 1 minute, 14 seconds by KO/TKO (referee stoppage) due to continuous punishment on the ground after a straight punch knocked Ishida to the mat.
- James Thompson defeated Hidehiko Yoshida in R1 in 7 minutes, 50 seconds by TKO (referee stoppage). In the immortal words of American sportscaster Warner Wolf, “If you picked Hidehiko Yoshida to win at -600 against James Thompson getting +400, you lost!“
- Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira defeated Josh Barnett after 3R by a 3-0 judges’ decision.
- PRIDE Heavyweight Title match: Emelianenko Fedor defeated Mark Hunt in R1 in 8 minutes, 16 seconds with an arm-lock.
Topics: All Topics, Japan, Media, MMA, PRIDE, Zach Arnold | 34 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
*sneaks in to change “triangle lock” to “Rainbow pants triangle choke.”*
*Also, poor Minowa Man. 🙁 *
It wasn’t a triangle, it was a gogoplata, which made it about 500 times better.
That thing had a name? It was the craziest sub I’ve ever seen 🙂
Wouldn’t want to judge Kondo-Gono, but I gueeeeeeeeeeeess I’d give Gono the slight edge.
Haha, Kurtanidze took one uppercut on the jaw and literally turned around and dove to the ropes to play dead. Obviously his first experience in that field. He strarted tapping just as ref came in to break it up anyway.
NOT a KO by ANY stretch of the imagination. SUB or TKO. He was wide awake all the time, just scared.
What the hell? One of my friends (who lives in Japan) is reporting that CroCop is on TBS (K-1 Dynamite!). Take this with a pinch of salt: CroCop is back in K-1?
Nice FU PRIDE – guest appearance from K-1 then.
Gomi just told the world why this was non-title 😀
Did Takada announce a LW GP in his intermission promo? Sure sounded like it, and it makes sense.
My friend says he really doesn’t know what is going on. Mirko may just be there as a guest.
TBS are reportedly just airing old Dynamite!! fights during extra time, one of which was Sakuraba vs. CroCop.
Also, Takada did indeed say the Lightweight Grand Prix would begin in May, and that they’d do another US card in June.
What in the fuck did I just saw? *stares at Thompson vs. Yoshida*
Eh, that was stopped WAY too late. Like Sakuraba – Smirnovas, except this did stop in the end. Great fight though.
J: That’s what people were posting in this chat. Yoshida might have a neck injury and other things. Damn. I hope he’s okay.
Yikes. And Barnett looks mauled before it has even started.
It wasn’t wise for Yoshida to accept the fight against Thompson as late as he did. And it wasn’t wise for PRIDE to put Yoshida in that spot, either. If he was going to lose, give him more time to prepare for a higher-name-value opponent. Unless a fight is rigged or worked, sometimes you can’t control the variable that you think you can control. Sometimes the joke you play ends up being a joke on you…
Jordan: Thanks for letting me know dude.
Huh? First you said “Where is Yoshida on this card – they need Yoshida”. Then the fight is announced, and you go “This is a jobber fight, way too predictable”. And now it was a bad idea because it was risky and booking Yoshida in the first place shouldn’t have happened? He was supposed to face Nastula. It was never meant to be a runover for Yoshida. He was going to face competiion on this card. And he did. And he lost. Like he has done before.
Who needs Cro Cop – Fedor when they can just book another couple of Nog-Barnett fioghts, eh? Just let them freaking rest first, please, PRIDE.
As in, why isn’t their top Japanese star on the card sooner? It’s a fair question to ask considering this is the NYE show, the biggest of the shows.
That was the whole mindset of DSE booking it. Give Yoshida what they perceived to be an easy opponent to win in basically a last-minute addition to the card line-up.
It was half-assed. They announce the fight a week before the show in a situation where without a major TV push, it’s not going to sell a significant amount of tickets. It was just bad business from all parties involved because this isn’t wrestling where you can control a lot of the variables going into a fight. There was little to no benefit for Yoshida beating James Thompson, but for Thompson he had a ton to gain by winning — and for that, I congratulate him. It isn’t his fault that he was basically booked in the role of ‘jobber’ slot, only for him to turn around and actually win.
HOOOOOOOLLLLYYYY SHIT. What a fight! Hunt was impressive!!!
There is no way DSE considered Thompson an easy opponent for Yoshida after the Gardner fight. Obviously this was about having Yoshida fight on NYE, not about him winning. And again: NASTULA wouldn’t exactly have been a walkover either. Typical clumsy by PRIDE to actually wait for Pawel’s suspension to be handed out.
AMAZING job by Hunt. I can not remember the last time Fedor looked voulnerable.
Hunt did much better on the ground against Fedor than Nog, Coleman, and Oyama combined…
I meant Ogawa, not Oyama..
After seeing Hunt on the ground with Fedor, I’d love to see a Mirko – Hunt rematch. Seems like they’d both be just as happy to go to the ground with one another.
The thing I enjoyed most about FUMETSU was this photo
http://ca1n.c.yimg.jp/sports/sn2006123021124400052271m/sportsnavi.yahoo.co.jp/fight/pict/200612/im00052271.jpg
Sakakibara needs a new suit 🙂
Ok this had to be one of the best cards of the year! How can you spin this bad? This is exactly why I am bummed to see Pride go down the tubes, they put KICKASS shows. Argh…
All the fights were great (although I did not see the gono-kondo(which was boring apparently?) and the minowa-tamura).
The decisions were pretty much all real slobber knockers.
Melendez is going places.
Gomi with an electrifying K.O.
Aoki with the crazyest sub since chonan-silva.
Hunt being competitive.
Nakamura real showing that he is not a can(as some people here were saying).
Back and forth war between Yoshida and Thompson.
From top to bottom this card was sweet MMA. I just hope Barnett can take a break, get his conditioning back up and just go out there and WIN!
Wow another super-close and extremely exciting match between Barnett and Nog. That decision could have gone either way; I was surprised it wasn’t a split one again. Barnett’s boxing was much sharper this time around at least for the first round. He slowed down in the 2nd and 3rd after Nog started to catch him a bit.
Who do you think Wanderlei will face in February?
Interesting notes on attendance by a guy who went to the event – his estimate is about 20,000, which is very different from the official estimate
http://www.mma.tv/tuf/index.cfm?ac=ListMessages&PID=1&TID=958918&FID=1&pc=1
in particular he notes some of $300 seats were empty
his blog from attending the event
http://insidejapan.blogspot.com/
Notes for people who couldn’t see the Japanese version.
Nobuhiko Takada can play piano. He can do anything but fight, lol. He was playing the piano for a bit then there was some gospel music (think “Fish don’t fry in the kitchen” style singing), then the usual enterance with the giant Japanese drum.
Ikuhisa Minowa came out wearing a cape that said “Neo human” in Japanese I think and was billed as “Minowa Man”
Yoshida was stretchered off, the crowd went dead.
There was a credit scene at the end.
They have the old versus screen music this time (the one used in 2005)
Akihiro Gono first came out to some emo Linkin Park music, then a fake Miyohara/Kiyohara (forgot which one) came out in full baseball attire and ball grabbing then he joined Gono for the DJ Ozma dance music.
Which is found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGUVXNqbfD0 lol
Nice highlight clip of the flexible one.
http://www.dailymotion.com/visited/search/shinya%2Baoki/video/xoswd_shinya-aoki
I was impressed by Thompson and by Hunt. It’s too bad no one’s making a big deal over the fact that they were both helped by Barnett … both Thompson and Hunt displayed some impressive defensive ground skills. Even though Barnett lost, I think he fought an amazing fight and is the only one who came close to finishing the fight. I hope he takes 4 months off to relax and have fun before fighting again. And when he does, he needs to work on his striking.
Excellent effort by Hunt, I’m praying for a Hunt – Thompson match in 2007. Hunt, or as Bryan Alvarez calls him ‘the real life Samoa Joe’ is definitely having his fair share of ****+ matches (Silva, Mirko, Nishijima etc etc). Let’s hope he’s booked right in 2007, avoiding Barnett Nogueira etc etc.
Awesome show, production values were almost back up to their usual standard, with the same old gravelly voiced guy and stirring back stories to major fights.
This is one I’m going to watch again and again.
Any news in the Japanese media of Yoshida’s condition? He looked seriously drain bamaged to me…